Red Dog Mine: international player, local jobs driver.

• Author: Hollander, Zaz
• Position: MINING

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The scale of the Red Dog Mine near Kotzebue is massive and worldwide.

The mine is one of the largest zinc concentrate producers on the planet, thanks to an ultra-rich ore body expected to deliver major quantities of the sought-after mineral for the next twenty years. Red Dog also produces lead, though at a smaller scale.

A port about fifty miles west of the mine contains the two largest buildings in the state by square footage. They store powdery piles of zinc awaiting shipment. The mine makes the most of a short, one-hundred-day shipping season bracketed by the heavy ice formation in the Chukchi Sea.

The Alaska State flag painted on the roof of one of those buildings is the biggest in Alaska.

But the economic impact of the mine is also very local, backers say.

Along with decent jobs, the mine generates a tremendous amount of local revenue for the Northwest Arctic Borough, where high fuel prices and low job opportunities add up to some of the highest costs of living in Alaska.

A unique operating agreement between mine operator Teck Alaska Incorporated and landowner NANA Regional Corporation, Inc. guarantees that a share of Red Dog's jobs go to NANA shareholders.

This spring, the number of shareholders working at the mine was around 53 percent of the 450 Teck employees there. Not all those shareholders live in the area but about half do.

"That agreement has put people from this borough to work and that income stays in our community, whether it's Buckland, Noatak, Kivalina, or Kotzebue," Northwest Arctic Borough Mayor Reggie Joule says. "Right now about 25 percent of the workforce still resides in the borough and that's a healthy chunk of change in terms of the payroll that stays here."

By the Numbers

Red Dog is the Northwest Arctic Borough's only taxpayer.

In 2011, the borough's Teck revenue was $8.9 million through a payment in lieu of taxes agreement. Last fiscal year, that amount jumped to a little more than $13 million, according to Borough Treasurer Judith Hassinger.

NANA received $124.7 million in net proceeds from the Red Dog Mine in 2012, of which $76.4 million is shared with other regions, Kikiktagruk Inupiat Corporation, and at-large shareholders, according to Shelly Wozniak, NANA's communications director.

The 1980s agreement between what was then Cominco and NANA now serves as a model for partnerships with indigenous groups and mine operators. NANA has brought in indigenous groups from places such as...